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Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Raven Tree Press has put up the media kit and activity sheets for Bedtime Monster! There's an interview with me in which I give too much information--does everyone really need to know that I write in bed? What was I thinking! The activity sheets include a game of Hang Monster and a super cute coloring sheet from the book, which is illustrated by Bonnie Adamson. Exciting stuff. I feel so official now. If you want to check them out you can download them at the Raven Tree Press website.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Yes, I have been a bad blogger lately. Truth be told, John Lechner held up this blog last month and if it wasn't for him there wouldn't have been much of anything going on. I had big plans for when John was here. I was going to post all sorts of things about writing and querying and such, but sometimes life gets in the way.

So here I am, half way into the month of May and I've got nothing. No new Illustrator of the Month, no Unread interview lined up. Apparantly I need a break. I've been hesitant to say anything here because, what if I suddenly want to post something? Maybe I'll post this and then become super blogger woman(okay, that's highly doubtful.) I have lots of things to catch up on, in my writing life and in my regular life, and I suppose I need to focus on that. I've been paying for webhosting for at least 6 months now and have yet to create a website, and most importantly(as far as writing goes) I want to make a big push to get my material out into the towering slush piles gracing editor's and agent's desks. I mean, I'm not going to sell a thing if I don't get anything out there!

So yeah, I'll still be around, posting sometimes, twittering too much, and maybe facebooking every so often. I think I'm going to let the interviews go for a couple months until I can get back into the swing of things, or for as long as I can stand it. I love asking writers and illustrators about what they do!

Saturday, May 1, 2010

I've been stoked to feature John Lechner as my Illustrator of the Month for April. John is a fabulous illustrator, writer, animator, and designer with tons of experience and expertise. To wrap up his frolic on my blog, John is sharing some tips on writing and drawing comics for kids, something he knows a lot about. John has two comic style books for kids published by Candlewick Press, Sticky Burr: Adventures in Burrwood Forest, and Sticky Burr: The Prickly Peril. He also posts an ongoing Sticky Burr web comic, which is lots of fun.

Tips On Writing & Drawing Comics for Kids
by John Lechner

All comic artists have their own ways of working and theories about comics. I'm going to share some of my own thoughts and ideas, drawn from my own experience.

To write successfully for children, you need to apply all the rules of good writing, but even more so. The same applies to comics. When you write and draw comics for children, you need to strive for the most clear, well-scripted, well-paced and dynamic story you can create. I don't mean that comics for kids should be constrained or conventional, only that they should be good.

Comics and picture books have a lot in common, they both use words and pictures to tell a story, and the words and pictures usually share the load. The main difference is that in comics, the story is depicted in real time -- that is, the time it takes to read one page is roughly the time it would take for the scene to actually occur. The drama plays out in front of you like a movie or play. This requires many images, so the page is divided up into panels which are read in sequence; hence the term "sequential art".

Because of this unique quality, not all stories lend themselves to comics, just as not all stories make good picture books, or poems, or films. It helps if the story is not too wordy and has some “visual drama” -- that is, scenes that are especially dramatic when you see them played out in front of you. A comic about people having conversations is harder to pull off, though these can work well for older readers if the dialog is good. For younger children, visual action and humor that take advantage of the "real time" nature of comics can be very effective. (For instance, showing cause and effect, or a progression of events.)

Speech balloons are another key ingredient of comics. They don't merely show what is being said, they control the flow and pacing of a page as well. Their placement is just as important (if not more) than that of the images and panels on the page. When reading a page of comics, the eyes should be able to follow a simple and logical path from one balloon to another. If the order is difficult to decipher, it slows down the reader and brings them out of the story. When drawing your comic pages, if you find that your word balloons don't follow a logical path, you may need to change the artwork. And if you find you have so many words that you don't have room for the characters, you may need to trim.

So what distinguishes a comic for kids, as opposed to a comic for older teens or adults? Partly content, and partly simplicity of form and layout, just as a picture book or early reader uses well-spaced text and easy-to-follow pages. Believe it or not, simplicity is even harder to achieve with comics, because you have to convey so much information visually, and perhaps this is why comics for young readers are so hard to pull off.

And just as traditional books often bend the rules and make readers stretch, so can comics as long as you don’t lose your reader in the process. Every word, panel and line should contribute towards telling the story, there’s no room for anything superfluous in comics. It’s an amazing and versatile medium that I’m still learning about myself, and hope to be exploring for a long time to come.